April 9, 2012

Google+ Grew 27 Percent In Visits From February To March

Google's social network, Google+, grew up 27 percent from February to March, according to a new study by Experian Hitwise.

The research firm says that Google+ reached a total of over 61 million visits during the same time frame.

Experian Hitwise also reported that Facebook is down 1.3 billion visits between July of 2011 and March of 2012, which is a 15-percent drop.

However, the drop in numbers from last year doesn't mean Facebook isn't still the world's largest social network. The site had about 7 billion visits for March, which is over 114 times the traffic of Google+.

The research firm said Google+ is sixth on the list of most-popular social networks for March visits, behind Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Tagged.

The way Experian Hitwise defines a "visit" to the site is if a user visits the social network anytime after 30 minutes of the previous visit.

A comScore report in January found that the average Google+ member spent 3.3 minutes on the site for the entire month, compared to 7.5 hours for the average Facebook user.

Experian Hitwise announced its numbers just a few days after Google CEO Larry Page announced that Google+ has over 100 million active users on the social network.

"It´s still early days, and we have a long way to go," Page wrote in a blog post to investors. "But these are tremendously important changes, and with over 120 Google+ integrations to date (including Google Search, YouTube and Android), we are on the right track."

Page did not say how he defined an "active" user, but the numbers from Experian Hitwise suggest that the site has fewer visits per month than what Page suggests it has as "active" members.